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Mundaka Upanishad
Mundaka Upanishad
CHAPTER ONE: SECTION I
1. Brahma first of the Gods was born, the creator of all, the world’s protector; he to Atharvan, his eldest son, declared the God-knowledge in which all sciences have their foundation.
2. The God-knowledge by Brahma declared to Atharvan, Atharvan of old declared to Angir; he to Satyavaha the Bharadwaja told it, the Bharadwaja to Angiras, both the higher and the lower knowledge.
3. Shaunaka, the great house-lord, came to Angiras in the due way of the disciple and asked of him, “Lord, by knowing what does all this that is become known?”
4. To him thus spoke Angiras: Twofold is the knowledge that must be known of which the knowers of the Brahman tell, the higher and the lower knowledge.
Page – 131 5. Of which the lower, the Rig Veda and the Yajur Veda and the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda, chanting, ritual, grammar, etymological interpretation, and prosody and astronomy. And then the higher by which is known the Immutable.
6. That the invisible, that the unseizable, without connections, without hue, without eye or ear, that which is without hands or feet, eternal, pervading, which is in all things and impalpable, that which is Imperishable, that which is the womb of creatures sages behold everywhere.
7. As the spider puts out and gathers in, as herbs spring up upon the earth, as hair of head and body grow from a living man, so here all is born from the Immutable.
8. Brahman grows by his energy at work, and then from Him is Matter born, and out of Matter life, and mind and truth and the worlds, and in works immortality.
9. He who is the Omniscient, the all-wise, He whose energy is all made of knowledge, from Him is born this that is Brahman here, this Name and Form and Matter.
Page – 132 CHAPTER ONE: SECTION II
1. This is That, the Truth of things: works which the sages beheld in the Mantras1 were in the Treta2 manifoldly extended. Works do ye perform religiously with one passion for the Truth; this is your road to the heaven of good deeds.
2. When the fire of the sacrifice is kindled and the flame sways and quivers, then between the double pourings of butter cast therein with faith thy offerings.
3. For he whose altar-fires are empty of the new-moon offering and the full-moon offering and the offering of the rains and the offering of the first fruits, or unfed, or fed without right ritual, or without guests or without the dues to the Vishwa-Devas, destroys his hope of all the seven worlds.
4. Kali, the black, Karali, the terrible, Manojava, thoughtswift, Sulohita, blood-red, Sudhumravarna, smoke-hued, Sphulingini, scattering sparks, Vishwaruchi, the all-beautiful, these are the seven swaying tongues of the fire.
1 The inspired verses of the Veda. 2 The second of the four ages.
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5. He who in these when they are blazing bright performs the rites, in their due season, him his fires of sacrifice take and they lead him, these rays of the Sun, there where the Overlord of the gods is the Inhabitant on high.
6. “Come with us”, “Come with us”, they cry to him, these luminous fires of sacrifice, and they bear him by the rays of the Sun speaking to him pleasant words of sweetness, doing him homage, “This is your holy world of Brahman and the heaven of your righteousness.”
7. But frail are the ships of sacrifice, frail these forms of sacrifice, all the eighteen of them, in which are declared the lower works; fools are they who hail them as the highest good and they come yet again to this world of age and death.
8. They who dwell shut within the Ignorance and they hold themselves for learned men thinking “We, even we are the wise and the sages”—fools are they and they wander around beaten and stumbling like blind men led by the blind.
9. They dwell in many bonds of the Ignorance, children thinking, “We have achieved our aim of Paradise”; for when the
Page – 134 men of works are held by their affections, and arrive not at the Knowledge, then they are overtaken by anguish, then their Paradise wastes by enjoying and they fall from their heavens.
10. Minds bewildered who hold the oblation offered and the well dug for the greatest righteousness and know not any other highest good, on the back of heaven they enjoy the world won by their righteousness and enter again this or even a lower world.
11. But they who in the forest follow after faith and self-discipline, calm and full of knowledge, living upon alms, cast from them the dust of their passions, and through the gate of the Sun they pass on there where is the Immortal, the Spirit, the Self undecaying and imperishable.
12. The seeker of the Brahman, having put to the test the worlds piled up by works, arrives at world-distaste, for not by work done is reached He who is Uncreated.3 For the knowledge of That, let him approach, fuel in hand, a Guru, one who is learned in the Veda and is devoted to contemplation of the Brahman.
3 Or, “He, the uncreated, lives not by that which is made.” Literally, “not by the made (or, by that which is done) the Unmade (He who is uncreated)”.
Page – 135 13. To him because he has taken entire refuge with him, with a heart tranquillised and a spirit at peace, that man of knowledge declares in its principles the science of the Brahman by which one comes to know the Immutable Spirit, the True and Real.
Page – 136 CHAPTER TWO: SECTION I
1. This is That, the Truth of things: as from one high-kindled fire thousands of different sparks are born and all have the same form of fire, so, O fair son, from the immutable manifold becomings are born and even into that they depart.
2. He, the divine, the formless Spirit, even he is the outward and the inward and he the Unborn; he is beyond life, beyond mind, luminous, Supreme beyond the immutable.
3. Life and mind and the senses are born from Him and the sky, and the wind, and light, and the waters and earth upholding all that is.
4. Fire is the head of Him and his eyes are the Sun and Moon, the quarters his organs of hearing and the revealed Vedas are his voice, air is his breath, the universe is his heart, Earth lies at his feet. He is the inner Self in all beings.
5. From Him is fire, of which the Sun is the fuel, then rain
Page – 137 from the Soma, herbs upon the earth, and the male casts his seed into woman: thus are these many peoples born from the Spirit.
6. From Him are the hymns of the Rig Veda, the Sama and the Yajur, initiation, and all sacrifices and works of sacrifice, and dues given, the year and the giver of the sacrifice and the worlds, on which the moon shines and the sun.
7. And from Him have issued many gods, and demi-gods and men and beasts and birds, the main breath and downward breath, and rice and barley, and askesis and faith and Truth, and chastity and rule of right practice.
8. The seven breaths are born from Him and the seven lights and kinds of fuel and the seven oblations and these seven worlds in which move the life-breaths set within with the secret heart for their dwelling-place, seven and seven.
9. From Him are the oceans and all these mountains and from Him flow rivers of all forms, and from Him are all plants, and sensible delight which makes the soul to abide with the material elements.
Page – 138 10. The Spirit is all this universe; He is works and askesis and the Brahman, supreme and immortal. O fair son, he who knows this hidden in the secret heart, scatters even here in this world the knot of the Ignorance.
CHAPTER TWO: SECTION II
1. Manifested, it is here set close within, moving in the secret heart, this is the mighty foundation and into it is consigned all that moves and breathes and sees. This that is that great foundation here, know, as the Is and Is-not, the supremely desirable, greatest and the Most High, beyond the knowledge of creatures.
2. That which is the Luminous, that which is smaller than the atoms, that in which are set the worlds and their peoples, That is This,—it is Brahman immutable: life is That, it is speech and mind. That is This, the True and Real, it is That which is immortal: it is into That that thou must pierce, O fair son, into That penetrate.
3. Take up the bow of the Upanishad, that mighty weapon, set to it an arrow sharpened by adoration, draw the bow with a heart wholly devoted to the contemplation of That, and O fair son, penetrate into That as thy target, even into the Immutable.
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4. OM is the bow and the soul is the arrow, and That, even the Brahman, is spoken of as the target. That must be pierced with an unfaltering aim; one must be absorbed into That as an arrow is lost in its target.
5. He in whom are inwoven heaven and earth and the mid-region, and mind with all the life-currents, Him know to be the one Self; other words put away from you: this is the bridge to immortality.
6. Where the nerves are brought close together like the spokes in the nave of a chariot-wheel, this is He that moves within,—there is He manifoldly born. Meditate on the Self as OM and happy be your passage to the other shore beyond the darkness.
7. The Omniscient, the All-wise, whose is this might and majesty upon the earth, is this self enthroned in the divine city of the Brahman, in his ethereal heaven.
8. A mental being, leader of the life and the body, has set a heart in matter, in matter he has taken his firm foundation.
Page – 140 By its knowing the wise see everywhere around them That which shines in its effulgence, a shape of Bliss and immortal.
9. The knot of the heart-strings is rent, cut away are all doubts, and a man’s works are spent and perish, when is seen That which is at once the being below and the Supreme.
10. In a supreme golden sheath the Brahman lies, stainless, without parts. A Splendour is That, It is the Light of Lights, It is That which the self-knowers know.
11. There the sun shines not and the moon has no splendour and the stars are blind; there these lightnings flash not, how then shall burn this earthly fire? All that shines is but the shadow of his shining; all this universe is effulgent with his light.
12. All this is Brahman immortal, naught else; Brahman is in front of us, Brahman behind us, and to the south of us and to the north of us4 and below us and above us; it stretches everywhere. All this is Brahman alone, all this magnificent universe.
4 Or, “to the right and the left of us”.
Page – 141 CHAPTER THREE: SECTION I
1. Two birds, beautiful of wing, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow.
2. The soul is the bird that sits immersed on the one common tree; but because he is not lord he is bewildered and has sorrow. But when he sees that other who is the Lord and beloved, he knows that all is His greatness and his sorrow passes away from him.
3. When, a seer, he sees the Golden-hued, the maker, the Lord, the Spirit who is the source of Brahman,5 then he becomes the knower and shakes from his wings sin and virtue; pure of all stain he reaches the supreme identity.6
4. This is the life in things that shines manifested by all these beings; a man of knowledge coming wholly to know this, draws back from creeds and too much disputings. In the Self his delight, at play in the Self, doing works,—the best is he among the knowers of the Eternal.
5 Or, “whose source is Brahman”; Shankara admits the other meaning as an alternative, but explains it as “the source of the lower Brahman”. 6 Or, “pure of all staining tinge he reaches to a supreme equality.”
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5. The Self can always be won by truth, by self-discipline, by integral knowledge, by a life of purity,—this Self that is in the inner body, radiant, made all of light whom by the perishing of their blemishes the doers of askesis behold.
6. It is Truth that conquers and not falsehood; by Truth was stretched out the path of the journey of the gods, by which the sages winning their desire ascend there where Truth has its supreme abode.
7. Vast is That, divine, its form unthinkable; it shines out subtler than the subtle:7 very far and farther than farness, it is here close to us, for those who have vision it is even here in this world; it is here, hidden in the secret heart.
8. Eye cannot seize, speech cannot grasp Him, nor these other godheads; not by austerity can he be held nor by works: only when the inner being is purified by a glad serenity of knowledge, then indeed, meditating, one beholds the Spirit indivisible.
9. This Self is subtle and has to be known by a thought-mind
7 Or, “minuter than the minute”.
Page – 143 into which the life-force has made its fivefold entry: all the conscious heart of creatures is shot through and inwoven with the currents of the life-force and only when it is purified can this Self manifest its power.8
10. Whatever world the man whose inner being is purified sheds the light of his mind upon, and whatsoever desires he cherishes, that world he takes by conquest, and those desires. Then, let whosoever seeks for success and well-being approach with homage a self-knower.
CHAPTER THREE: SECTION II
1. He knows this supreme Brahman as the highest abiding place in which shines out, inset, the radiant world. The wise who are without desire and worship the Spirit pass beyond this sperm.9
2. He who cherishes desires and his mind dwells with his longings, is by his desires born again wherever they lead him, but the man who has won all his desire10 and has found his soul, for him even here in this world vanish away all desires.
8 The verb vibhavati seems here to have a complex sense and to mean, “to manifest its full power and pervading presence”. 9 Shankara takes it so in the sense of semen virile, which is the cause of birth into the cosmos. But it is possible that it means rather “pass beyond this brilliant universe”, the radiant world which has just been spoken of, to the greater Light which is its abiding place and source, the supreme Brahman. 10 Or, “finished with desires”.
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3. This Self is not won by exegesis, nor by brain-power, nor by much learning of Scripture. Only by him whom It chooses can It be won; to him this Self unveils its own body.
4. This Self cannot be won by any who is without strength, nor with error in the seeking, nor by an askesis without the true mark: but when a man of knowledge strives by these means his self enters into Brahman, his abiding place.
5. Attaining to him, seers glad with fullness of knowledge, perfected in the Self, all passions cast from them, tranquillised,—these, the wise, come to the all-pervading from every side, and, uniting themselves with him, enter utterly the All.
6. Doers of askesis who have made sure of the aim11 of the whole-knowledge of Vedanta, the inner being purified by the Yoga of renunciation, all in the hour of their last end passing beyond death are released into the worlds of the Brahman.
11 Or, “meaning”.
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7. The fifteen parts return into their foundations, and all the gods pass into their proper godheads, works and the Self of Knowledge,—all become one in the Supreme and Imperishable.
8. As rivers in their flowing reach their home12 in the ocean and cast off their names and forms, even so one who knows is delivered from name and form and reaches the Supreme beyond the Most High, even the Divine Person.
9. He, verily, who knows that Supreme Brahman becomes himself Brahman; in his lineage none is born who knows not the Brahman. He crosses beyond sorrow, he crosses beyond sin, he is delivered from the knotted cord of the secret heart and becomes immortal.—
10. This is That declared by the Rig Veda. Doers of works, versed in the Veda, men absorbed in the Brahman, who putting their faith in the sole-seer offer themselves to him sacrifice,—to them one should speak this Brahman-knowledge, men by whom the Vow of the Head has been done according to the rite.
12 Or, “come to their end”.
Page – 146 11. This is That, the Truth of things, which the seer Angiras spoke of old. This none learns who has not performed the Vow of the Head. Salutation to the seers supreme! Salutation to the seers supreme!
Page – 147 Readings in the Taittiriya Upanishad
The Knowledge of Brahman
The knower of Brahman reacheth that which is supreme. This is that verse which was spoken; “Truth, Knowledge, Infinity the Brahman, He who knoweth that hidden in the secrecy in the supreme ether, Enjoyeth all desires along with the wise-thinking Brahman.”
This is the burden of the opening sentences of the Taittiriya Upanishad’s second section; they begin its elucidation of the highest truth. Or in the Sanskrit,
brahmavid āpnoti param — tad esābhyuktā — satyam jñānam anantam brahma — yo veda nihitam guhāyām—parame vyoman— so ‘śnute sarvān kāmān saha—brahmanā vipaściteti.
But what is Brahman?
Whatever reality is in existence, by which all the rest subsists, that is Brahman. An Eternal behind all instabilities, a Truth of things which is implied, if it is hidden in all appearances, a Constant which supports all mutations, but is not increased, diminished, abrogated,—there is such an unknown x which makes existence a problem, our own self a mystery, the universe a riddle. If we were only what we seem to be to our normal self-awareness, there would be no mystery; if the world were only what it can be made out to be by the perceptions of the senses and their strict analysis in the reason, there would be no riddle; and if to take our life as it is now and the world as it has so far developed to our experience were the whole possibility of our knowing and doing, there would be no problem. Or at best
Page – 151 there would be but a shallow mystery, an easily solved riddle, the problem only of a child’s puzzle. But there is more, and that more is the hidden head of the Infinite and the secret heart of the Eternal. It is the highest and this highest is the all; there is none beyond and there is none other than it. To know it is to know the highest and by knowing the highest to know all. For as it is the beginning and source of all things, so everything else is its consequence; as it is the support and constituent of all things, so the secret of everything else is explained by its secret; as it is the sum and end of all things, so everything else amounts to it and by throwing itself into it achieves the sense of its own existence. This is the Brahman.
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If this unknown be solely an indecipherable, only indefinable x, always unknown and unknowable, the hidden never revealed, the secret never opened to us, then our mystery would for ever remain a mystery, our riddle insoluble, our problem intangible. Its existence, even while it determines all we are, know and do, could yet make no practical difference to us; for our relation to it would then be a blind and helpless dependence, a relation binding us to ignorance and maintainable only by that ignorance. Or again, if it be in some way knowable, but the sole result of knowledge were an extinction or cessation of our being, then within our being it could have no consequences; the very act and fructuation of knowledge would bring the annihilation of all that we now are, not its completion or fulfilment. The mystery, riddle, problem would not be so much solved as abolished, for it would lose all its data. In effect we should have to suppose that there is an eternal and irreconcilable opposition between Brahman and what we now are, between the supreme cause and all its effects or between the supreme source and all its derivations. And it would then seem that all that the Eternal originates, all he supports, all he takes back to himself is a denial or contradiction of his being which, though in itself a negative of that which alone is, has yet
Page – 152 in some way become a positive. The two could not coexist in consciousness; if he allowed the world to know him, it would disappear from being. But the Eternal is knowable, He defines himself so that we may seize him, and man can become, even while he exists as man and in this world and in this body, a knower of the Brahman. The knowledge of the Brahman is not a thing luminous but otiose, informing to the intellectual view of things but without consequence to the soul of the individual or his living; it is a knowledge that is a power and a divine compulsion to change; by it his existence gains something that now he does not possess in consciousness. What is this gain? it is this that he is conscious now in a lower state only of his being, but by knowledge he gains his highest being. The highest state of our being is not a denial, contradiction and annihilation of all that we now are; it is a supreme accomplishment of all things that our present existence means and aims at, but in their highest sense and in the eternal values.
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To live in our present state of self-consciousness is to live and to act in ignorance. We are ignorant of ourselves, because we know as yet only that in us which changes always, from moment to moment, from hour to hour, from period to period, from life to life, and not that in us which is eternal. We are ignorant of the world because we do not know God; we are aware of the law of appearances, but not of the law and truth of being. Our highest wisdom, our minutest most accurate science, our most effective application of knowledge can be at most a thinning of the veil of ignorance, but not a going beyond it, so long as we do not get at the fundamental knowledge and the consciousness to which that is native. The rest are effective for their own temporal purposes, but prove ineffective in the end, because they do not bring to the highest good; they lead to no permanent solution of the problem of existence.
Page – 153 The ignorance in which we live is not a baseless and wholesale falsehood, but at its lowest the misrepresentation of a Truth, at its highest an imperfect representation and translation into inferior and to that extent misleading values. It is a knowledge of the superficial only and therefore a missing of the secret essential which is the key to all that the superficial is striving for; a knowledge of the finite and apparent, but a missing of all that the apparent symbolises and the finite suggests; a knowledge of inferior forms, but a missing of all that our inferior life and being has above it and to which it must aspire if it is to fulfil its greatest possibilities. The true knowledge is that of the highest, the inmost, the infinite. The knower of the Brahman sees all these lower things in the light of the Highest, the external and superficial as a translation of the internal and essential, the finite from the view of the Infinite. He begins to see and know existence no longer as the thinking animal, but as the Eternal sees and knows it. Therefore he is glad and rich in being, luminous in joy, satisfied of existence.
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Knowledge does not end with knowing, nor is it pursued and found for the sake of knowing alone. It has its full value only when it leads to some greater gain than itself, some gain of being. Simply to know the eternal and to remain in the pain, struggle and inferiority of our present way of being, would be a poor and lame advantage. A greater knowledge opens the possibility and, if really possessed, brings the actuality of a greater being. To be is the first verb which contains all the others; knowledge, action, creation, enjoyment are only a fulfilment of being. Since we are incomplete in being, to grow is our aim, and that knowledge, action, creation, enjoyment are the best which most help us to expand, grow, feel our existence. Mere existence is not fullness of being. Being knows itself as power, consciousness, delight; a greater being means a greater
Page – 154 power, consciousness and delight. If by greater being we incurred only a greater pain and suffering, this good would not be worth having. Those who say that it is, mean simply that we get by it a greater sense of fulfilment which brings of itself a greater joy of the power of existence, and an extension of suffering or a loss of other enjoyment is worth having as a price for this greater sense of wideness, height and power. But this could not be the perfection of being or the highest height of its fulfilment; suffering is the seal of a lower status. The highest consciousness is integrally fulfilled in wideness and power of its existence, but also it is integrally fulfilled in delight. The knower of Brahman has not only the joy of light, but gains something immense as the result of his knowledge, brahmavid āpnoti. What he gains is that highest, that which is supreme; he gains the highest being, the highest consciousness, the highest wideness and power of being, the highest delight; brahmavid āpnoti param.
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The Supreme is not something aloof and shut up in itself. It is not a mere indefinable, prisoner of its own featureless absoluteness, impotent to define, create, know itself variously, eternally buried in a sleep or a swoon of self-absorption. The Highest is the Infinite and the Infinite contains the All. Whoever attains the highest consciousness, becomes infinite in being and embraces the All. To make this clear the Upanishad has defined the Brahman as the Truth, Knowledge, Infinity and has defined the result of the knowledge of Him in the secrecy, in the cave of being, in the supreme ether as the enjoyment of all its desires by the soul of the individual in the attainment of its highest self-existence. Our highest state of being is indeed a becoming one with Brahman in his eternity and infinity, but it is also an association
Page – 155 with him in delight of self-fulfilment, asnute saha brahmanā. And that principle of the Eternal by which this association is possible, is the principle of his knowledge, his self-discernment and all-discernment, the wisdom by which he knows himself perfectly in all the world and all beings, brahmanā vipaścita. Delight of being is the continent of all the fulfilled values of existence which we now seek after in the forms of desire. To know its conditions and possess it purely and perfectly is the infinite privilege of the eternal Wisdom.
Page – 156 Truth, Knowledge, Infinity
Truth, Knowledge, Infinity, not as three separate things, but in their inseparable unity, are the supernal conscious being of the Eternal. It is an infinite being, an infinite truth of being, an infinite self-knowledge of self-being. Take one of these away and the idea of the Eternal fails us; we land ourselves in half-lights, in dark or shining paradoxes without issue or in a vain exaggeration and apotheosis of isolated intellectual conceptions. Infinity is the timeless and spaceless and causeless infinity of the eternal containing all the infinities of space and time and the endless succession which humanly we call causality. But in fact causality is only an inferior aspect and translation into mental and vital terms of something which is not mechanical causality, but the harmonies of a free self-determination of the being of the Eternal. Truth is truth of the infinite and eternal, truth of being, and truth of becoming only as a self-expression of the being. The circumstances of the self-expression appear to the mind as the finite, but nothing is really finite except the way the mind has of experiencing all that appears to its view. All things are, each thing is the Brahman. Knowledge is the Eternal’s inalienable self-knowledge of his infinite self-existence and of all its truth and reality and, in that truth, of all things as seen not by the mind, but by the self-view of the Spirit. This knowledge is not possible to the mind; it can only be reflected inadequately by it when it is touched by a ray from the secret luminous cavern of our superconscient being; yet of that ray we can make a shining ladder to climb into the source of this supreme self-viewing wisdom. To know the eternal Truth, Knowledge, Infinity is to know the Brahman.
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